Indie Light

While the overall critical reception for this game was fairly average, it nonetheless made it’s way onto my list of personal favourites. Interestingly though that wasn’t always the case, when I received it for Christmas in 2010 I played it for a few hours and found it to be lacklustre, especially in comparison to the previous game, which just had something special. I gave up and put it to the side for a year or two, and the break must have done me good because upon returning to the game I found it far more palatable than I remembered and I quickly completed it. Granted it’s still not quite as good as the original, but that could easily be due to nostalgia and more familiarity and appreciation with the source material, than one game actually being better than the other.

Oh, while I remember if you’re interested in reading my thoughts on the original Godfather game, you can click here. Now I don’t want to waste too much of your time so I’ll say outright that despite growing to appreciate the game more as time passed, and genuinely enjoying playing it, enough that I’ve replayed it more than once, I do think it fails fundamentally as a sequel. What do I mean by that? Well in my opinion a sequel has to be at least as good as the original, but if not certainly it must develop or expand upon elements of the original, and while it was an engaging narrative, that adapted the story of the motion picture, while also incorporating original story, it didn’t quite develop or grow as much as I would have liked. Placed side by side, the original just feels richer, bolder and more theatrical, which again could be down to matter of personal taste, as I preferred the first movie or the second as well, but the only real improvements to Godfather 2 were technical and mechanical rather than in terms of narrative and unique gameplay, and any major upgrades made to the technical aspects were more to do with wider changes in the gaming landscape than any real innovation on the side of the developers.

So to follow on from that point a little and expand upon it, The Godfather 2 was released in 2009, by which time, GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas had been released, and similarly the first instalment of the Mafia franchise (which has considerable thematic and cosmetic overlap) and both True Crime games (True Crime: Streets of LA and True Crime: New York City) had burst onto the landscape, and again with similar thematic overtones, Scarface: The World Is Yours dropped in 2006. Each of these game had to some degree or another aspects which The Godfather 2 emulated or adopted, and so while their were mechanics in it which were arguably better than The Godfather, it cannot really be said that this innovation was anything but other than a developer taking a look at the wilder landscape of gaming and incorporating elements which work within the context of the narrative.

That is by no means a rebuke of The Godfather 2, as successful gaming mechanics becoming industry standard is literally as old as the medium. In fact I think The Godfather 2 adopted a great mix of the elements developed by the aforementioned games, as well as those present in The Godfather, to create a seamless and engaging game, that also uses the Godfather license to provide a narrative framework, but not letting itself be restricted by it.

I think though that my biggest issue with the game is also something that properly utilised might have made it better than the predecessor. So there’s a feature called ‘Squad Mechanic’ which puts the player character in charge of a variety of ‘Made Men’. On a cosmetic level this is similar to something present in San Andreas, where you can recruit fellow gang members, and they will protect you, fight enemy game members and otherwise help you out. However they have no real personality or unique stats, and annoyingly they have reactive agency, so they may start fights you didn’t plan to start, which can be incredibly frustrating, but getting away from complaining about GTA, these gang members are cannon fodder, but the ‘Made Men’ in The Godfather 2 are unique, have specialised stats, capabilities and have personality to them which adds to the fleshing out of the in-game universe.

So you use the ‘Squad Mechanic’ to hire and command these ‘Made Men’ and use their unique abilities to climb the hierarchy of the criminal underworld. For example, there’s a ‘Made Man’ who specialise in demolitions, and he can rig a bomb to a car or building, and this is useful for infiltration and general larceny. You have another ‘Made Man’ who specialises in engineering and he can cut through fences or cut out enemy communications. Now this is incredibly interesting, and it made for some really fun missions, however as I mentioned above, it was fully realised, because it was too restrictive, each challenge required a specific skill to beat it, and so you had no real influence in how to pursue an objective, for example if the mission required a demolitions expert you couldn’t find an alternate route using the ‘Made Man’ who specialises in arson. I understand that it might not have been feasible to have every objective have multiple routes to success, but it’s such a missed opportunity. All it would have taken is a few small tweaks, which would then allow the player to strategize and pick the best route for them and their team, and work out a unique solution to their problems and the result would have been a far superior game. Not to keep comparing this game to GTA, but this potential mechanic I’m suggesting was kind of harnessed in Grand Theft Auto V during the heists, so I know how easily it could have worked.

Something I really enjoyed from The Godfather was the extortion mechanic, and it is carried through into The Godfather 2. Now they did change it up slightly, now when you’re applying pressure to business owners, and racket operators, by smashing up stuff or throwing people around, a metre will pop up with two red bars, and you need to reach the first red bar in order to earn any money from the extortion attempt, and once you’ve reached that point you can keep pushing for extra profit. However, you need to be extra careful as if you go past that second red bar, you’ll push the owner too far and they’ll snap and attack you, or at least you’ll get nothing for all your troubles. I think this is a substantial improvement, as it affords you greater control and awareness as you go about your thuggery.

I think the main reason that I enjoyed the extortion aspect of the game so much is that it really did make you me feel like a real ‘wiseguy’ and it was really fun trying to earn that extra little bit of money by pushing the business owner right to the edge of his limit or by finding out their unique weak point (i.e. some business owners do not like being hit, others don’t like being threatened or having their store damaged). All in all, it’s just a very fun part of the game that for the most part can be completely ignored in favour of the main storyline, but is still enjoyable in its own right.

Another new aspect to this game were the crime rings, as with the previous game your main aim is to takeover the criminal enterprises and legitimate business of the other crime families, but now each business is now connected to a much larger multi-business crime ring owned by one of the crime families and once you’ve taken over all of the business owned by that crime family you’ll gain a special bonus, for example taking over the diamond smuggling businesses will earn you bulletproof vests, and a nice bonus is that it also removes them from the gang which had them before making them far easier to dispatch. 

Also like the previous game, one of your main aims is to take over the strongholds of a rival gang, and so once you’ve taken over all of the businesses controlled by another crime family, you then want to attack their stronghold before they have time to cover and eradicate them, which gives you a tremendous boost, while bringing you a step closer to a complete takeover. I think what I liked most about this was that it was a mixture of elements that made you successful, firstly you needed at least a little luck because even the best player can fall short, but also you need skill and a strategy to get through it, sure you could just run in guns blazing, and that is a recognised strategy but overall you can just get caught up in the whole thing. Every time you infiltrated the compound, shooting and killing everyone in your path, planted a bomb and then escaped before it exploded, it was it’s own little adventure. 

One of my main criticisms of this game was that it diverged too greatly from the movie storyline, at times changing the order of events, or removing them entirely. To an extent the same claim could be made of the previous game, but while Aldo Trapani, the original character from the first game, supported events from the first movie, such as the infamous horse head in the bed scene, the character from the second game, Dominic is more actively and directly involved in events, which I feel kind of taints things a little. 

But perhaps my biggest complaint, for all the good and bad that this game has to offer, is that it didn’t get a sequel, a third game wasn’t produced and I just feel like that was a shame. I feel like the third movie wouldn’t have translated as well to a game, but they easily could have created an original storyline set within The Godfather universe, but alas at least for now it’s not to be.